Hamilton has lately added another boy to our stock; she and the child are both well. She desires to be affectionately remembered to Mrs. Washington and yourself.
We have nothing new here more than our papers contain, but are anxiously looking forward to a further development of the negotiations in Europe, with an ardent desire for general accommodation. It is at the same time agreeable to observe that the public mind is adopting more and more sentiments truly American, and free from foreign tincture.
I beg my best respects to Mrs. Washington.
James McHenry, Secretary of War during Adams's administration, was one of Hamilton's most loving friends. During the early operations of the army he saw a great deal of the latter, and there was much that was jocular and breezy in their conversation and correspondence. In after years this relation was more staid, but just as affectionate. In 1795, after Hamilton's retirement, McHenry wrote, "Though not writing I have not ceased to love you, nor for a moment felt any abatement of my friendship." At an earlier period, when Hamilton was but twenty-six, McHenry wrote, that if he were ten years older and twenty thousand pounds richer, he (Hamilton) might have the highest office in the gift of Congress, and added:
Cautious men think you sometimes intemperate, but seldom visionary. . . . Bold designs, measures calculated for their rapid execution—a wisdom that would convince from its own weight, a project that would surprise the people into greater happiness, without giving them an opportunity to view it and reject it—are not adapted to a council composed of discordant materials or to a people which have 13 heads, each of which pays superstitious adorations to inferior divinities.
Upon the occasion of a slight difference regarding the appointment of a candidate recommended by McHenry, the latter waited until Hamilton's retirement from office and wrote:
You see how well I have persevered in this determination, and that it is only now, when I can have nothing to expect, and nothing to give, that I recall you to the remembrance of our early union and friendship. It is during this period, my dear Hamilton, that you will find unequivocal instances of the disinterested friendship I feel for you and which ought to convince you, how well I am entided to a full return of yours. The tempest weathered and landed on the same shore, I may now congratulate you upon having established a system of credit and having conducted the affairs of our country upon principles and reasoning, which ought to insure its immortality, as it undoubtedly will your fame. Few public men have been so eminently fortunate, as voluntarily to leave so high a station with such a character and so well assured a reputation and still fewer have so well deserved the gratitude of their country and the eulogiums of history. Let this console you for past toils and pains, and reconcile you to humble pleasures and a private life. What remains for you, having ensured fame, but to ensure felicity. Look for It in the moderate pursuit of your profession, or if public life still flatters, in that office most congenial to it and which will not withdraw you from those literary objects that require no violent waste of spirits and those little plans that involve gender exercise and which you can drop or indulge In without injury to your family. I have built houses. I have cultivated fields. I have planned gardens. I have planted trees. I have written little essays. I have made poetry once a year to please my wife, at times got children and, at all times, thought myself happy. Why cannot you do the same? for after all, if a man is only to acquire fame or distinction by continued privations and abuse, I would incline to prefer a life of privacy and little pleasures.
Before the war McHenry studied medicine under Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia, and entered the army as a surgeon, but it was not long before he gave up his calling and became an aide to General Washington. He certainly took an unusual interest in the health of his friend Hamilton, and prescribed for him. According to his biographer, this was about the last professional duty that he performed, and followed shortly after his transfer, as he had been made prisoner by the British. Some of the advice given by the Revolutionary doctor would not be out of place to-day, and the directions regarding his friend's very unromantic disorder are the following:
In order to get rid of some of your present accumulations, you will be pleased to take the pills agreeable to the directions; and to prevent future accumulations observe the following table of diet. This will have a tendency also to correct your wit. I would advise for your breakfast two cups of tea sweetened with brown sugar and colored with about a tea-spoonful of milk. I prefer brown sugar to loaf because it is more laxative. And I forbid the free use of milk until your stomach recovers its natural powers. At present you would feel less uneasiness in digesting a round of beef than a pint of milk.
You will not drink your tea Just as it comes out of the pot; let it have time to cool. The astringuency of the tea IS more than counter balanced by the relaxing quality of hot water.
For your dinner let me recommend about six ounces of beef or mutton, either boiled or roasted, with eight or ten ounces of bread. Cut the meat from the tenderest part with little or no fat. Use the natural juice, but no rancid oily gravy whatsoever. For some time I would prefer the beef, because it contains more of a natural animal stimulus than mutton. Once or twice a week, you may indulge in a thin slice of ham. Your best condiment will be salt.
You must not eat as many vegetables as you please—a load of vegetables is as hurtful as a load of any other food. Besides the absurdity of crowding in a heap of discordant vegetables with a large quantity of meat is too much of itself for the digestive powers. You may eat a few potatoes every day. Water is the most general solvent the kindliest and the best assistance in the process of digestion. I would therefore advise it for your table drink. When you indulge in wine let it be sparingly. Never go beyond three glasses—but by no means every day.
I strictly forbid all eatables which I do not mention, principally because a formula of diet for your case should be simple and short. Should this table be strictly observed, it will soon become of little use, because you will have recovered that degree of health which is compatable with the nature of your constitution. You will then be your own councellor in diet for the man who has had ten years experience in eating and its consequences is a fool if he does not know how to choose his dishes better than his Doctor.
But in case you should fall into a debauch—you must next day have recourse to the pills. I hope however that you will not have recourse to them often. The great Paracelsus trusted to his pills to destroy the effects of intemperance— but he died if I forget not about the age of 30 notwithstanding his pills. Lewis Cornare the Italian was wiser—he trusted to an egg, and I think lived to about ninety.
Hamilton's accounts show that he lived well, and that his bills for wine during the time he stayed in New York reached goodly proportions, but he probably did not exceed his friend's prescription for his life appears to have been well-regulated and comparatively abstemious. It would be gratifying to know whether he would have lived to a ripe old age had his life not been snuffed out by the bullet of Burr. His children were all examples of longevity, for several were over eighty when they succumbed to ordinary senile conditions, and two were more than ninety. This vitality, however, might have been influenced by their mother, who was ninety-seven when she died.
I have alluded to other friends, many of whom were identified with his later life. These included his own medical advisers, Doctors Samuel Bard and David Hosack, the former of whom brought several of his children, including the first Philip, into the world, and who continued to take care of Hamilton until the end of his life. He was the son of Dr. John Bard, who had been associated with Dr. Peter Middleton, who, in 1750, made the first dissection recorded in this country. He was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, and began the practice of his profession in America in 1765. Dr. Hosack was present at the duel with Burr, and he and Dr. Post were with Hamilton when he died.
Among other intimates were Gouverneur Morris, Rufus King, Nicholas Fish, Egbert Benson, John Laurance, Brockholst Livingston, Richard Peters, Robert Troup, William Duer, Richard Varick, Oliver Wolcott, William Seton, Charles Wilkes, Matthew Clarkson, Richard Harrison, Elias Boudinot, Thomas Cooper, Caleb Gibbs, William Bayard, Timothy Pickering, and James Kent.
Some of these men were associated with him in the army, and during the years he was in Congress and in the Treasury, and others were constantly engaged at the same time in the courts. So closely were his professional and public life connected, that we find his correspondence